El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

[Zeeflyboy]

I'm waiting for some new end mills and some motivation to re-cut the front plate after my motor mount boo boo, but in the mean time I made a start on a low profile machine vice I designed. Haven't been very happy with the low profile vice I already have and want something much stronger and hopefully more accurate.

This is the overall design, today I made the fixed end:



Basically it uses a bolt pattern on the bed for alignment dowels and bolting down, but gives access right down to bed level (or below with a cut out I suppose!) which will be useful when trying to machine or drill taller pieces. I have since tweaked the design slightly to allow the travelling end to be bolted down as well if required for extra rigidity.

Missed taking a photo of the first bits, but basically vertically it is made up of 2 pieces of plate as I don't have any tools long enough to cut the whole thing in one pass and it allows me a bit more flexibility in how it is made.

After machining the two pieces and bolting them together, I popped them into the machine again and faced them down by 0.2mm on each of the main faces to give a nice flat and square face.






And after a quick tickle with some 1500 grit wet and dry:






Once I invest in some anodising equipment the plan will be to give this a nice black anodised finish... assuming the thing works as expected.